by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
Something is amiss in the state of Connecticut.
Weepin' Joe Lieberman has always enjoyed broad bipartisan support in his home state, but it's not clear to me that Lamont could have expected his opponent's popularity to grow among Republicans. Obviously, the lack of any meaningful Republican challenger plays a big role here.
But at the same time, Lieberman's approval among Independents and Democrats has continued to fall, and at a roughly equivalent pace. And there are more Dems & Indies in the state than Republicans. Yet Lamont continues to struggle in the head-to-head polls. It would appear, then, that Lamont has yet to convince voters that he's an "acceptable alternative", nor has he rendered Lieberman "totally unacceptable" in the eyes of anyone who's not a committed Demorat.
Lamont can still win the election, but he'll need to make Lieberman's waffling and warped brand of bipartisanship an issue that's larger than the question than how partisan he is—it has to be about how his yen for bipartianship leads him to the wrong side of the issue; on Iraq, on Alito, on the torture bill, on "we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril", and on any other number of issues. In his TV ads (notably "Turncoat" and "Joe's Gotta Go"), Lamont has focused solely on Lieberman's "independence" without connecting it to any issues. So far, that hasn't been enough.
Maybe running "Look Who's Talking" non-stop will do the trick.